People want surveillance options. One of the highest/most obvious features required, unsurprisingly, is the ability to see your cameras on your smart phone – which generally means you need a Smartphone App + a centralised server/system connecting the different ends. The alternative being that end users would likely need static IP addresses / Dynamic DNS setups to have a Smartphone app point “directly” to their exposed CCTV ports – which I don’t imagine regular consumers are keen on, likely why basically no such options seem to exist in the retail space (afaik - if there are widely used brands i dont know about, by all means clue me in).

Options that are fully local/closed/under user control, are almost impossible to find. This isn’t so much a consumer-specific problem, from my perspective, at this point – there aren’t enough options for consumers to choose differently. It’s sorta like how you’re generally ‘stuck’ with US-tethered Smartphones. It’s not so much a ‘choice’ that consumers get to make, as it is that these big businesses have effective monopolies and consumers are stuck.